Surgical sutures are used as part of nearly every surgical procedure. Even though the medical industry typically uses the generic term “suture” to describe a filament used in these surgical procedures, suture material varies greatly depending on the task to be accomplished.
Looking at sutures from a broad perspective, the strength of available suture materials varies greatly. For example, suture material used to dose and hold together tissue does not need to be much, if any, stronger than the surrounding tissue. Due at least in part to their relatively low material strength, these suture materials are often easy to manipulate and are easy to cut by the medical professional. On the opposite end of this strength continuum, high strength stainless steel wire may be used as suture material in locations where two bones are being held together and where the difficulty of manipulating and cutting such a high strength wire can be tolerated.
Due to advancements in plastics, there are now suture materials being used that rival stainless steel wire in terms of strength while retaining the flexibility of lower strength materials. For example, ultra high molecular weight polyethylene is now being used as a non-absorbable suture in locations, such as knee, shoulder, and other connective tissue repairs, where the surrounding tissue and/or suture anchors can support the additional loads made possible by such a high strength suture material.
As mentioned briefly above, suture materials typically become harder to cut as their strength increases. Obviously, most any high strength material can be cut easily and reliably using large hand tools. Unfortunately, medical professionals are not typically provided with the luxury of having such a large are required to use such large tools, especially during laparoscopic and arthroscopic procedures.
As described in the prior art, such as US 2006/0212045, US 2008/0195129, and US 2010/0069922 there are a variety of small reposable and disposable suture cutters that utilize a knife edge passing between two support surfaces or that utilize a knife edge passing alongside a single, often sharpened, support surface. The knife edge in each of these devices moves in a single path of motion such that the knife edge shears the suture. This function may work reasonably well if and/or when the knife edge is sharp. Because the sharpness of the knife edge reduces more quickly as the suture material strength increases, a particular suture cutter may become quickly unreliable when used to cut the highest strength suture materials. This fact requires the medical professional to use more than one disposable suture cutter or reposable suture cutter during each procedure, resulting in higher costs for everyone involved.
In light of the forgoing, a new suture cutter is required that can reliably cut high strength suture materials throughout a procedure.